Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Are 75% of our laws made in Brussels?

This is one of those boring debates that continues to limp on, not least
because of Ukip's mindless meme tweeting. There have been studies to
count all of them in order to express them as a percentage as if that
actually meant a damn. So I'm going to make this very simple. It's a
question of magnitude not percentage.

There are three kinds of laws. Regulations, decisions and directives. A
regulation is a law in itself. There are thousands of them. Decisions
are less straightforward and you can read about them here.

Directives however, are instructions to create law, often specifying
international standards to which those laws must conform. So while a law
may be passed by Westminster, it's because the EU told us to. On paper
it counts as a law made in the UK but it has its origins elsewhere.

It gets muddy when our own parliament adds laws to any bills enacting EU
directives. To get any measure of what the split is, you'd have to do a
long-winded forensic analysis which would be an absurdly complex
undertaking that would take years - by which time there would be a whole
raft of new laws.

But supposing we got an exact figure, what would that tell us? Can the
Dangerous Dogs Act be held in equal stature and magnitude to an EU law
instructing us to close down all coal powered power stations? Clearly
not.

We also need to get past the idea that any laws are "made in Brussels".
The vast majority of technical regulations from vehicles to sewers,
beach cleanliness to the curvature of cucumbers are all made by global
regulatory agencies such as Codex, UNECE and others too numerous to
list. They are adopted verbatim and passed down to the EU where they
either become regulations or the template for a directive. The EU
couldn't possibly make all the laws it takes credit for because, as they
are keen to remind us, they employ fewer people than the BBC.

What matters is that we are told what to do by Brussels because our MEPs
voting together cannot block law, we have no veto at the WTO and while
directives may be fewer in number, they are of massive consequence - and
they bypass democracy altogether.

So when you see that debate going on, you can take it as read that the
kippers are wrong, but the europhile zealots arguing the toss with them
are equally wrong, if not more so. It's a stupid debate where both sides
argue from a position of complete ignorance.

The truth is, governance is global now, we will always end up adopting
law made elsewhere, but if we want a voice and a veto at the very top
table, to ensure we can block laws we don't want, we're going to have to
leave the EU. Even Norway has more influence than we do. Let's get out while we can.